Cubist dances, for 8 instrumentalists (2013) [Ensemble Reconsil Vienna] by Martin Herraiz

Performed by Ensemble Reconsil Vienna at the Vienna Music University on Apr. 17, 2015.

Performers: Eric Lamb, flute/alto flute; Thomas Schön, bass clarinet; Stefan Thurner, trombone; Kaori Nishii, piano; Bojidara Kouzmanova-Vladar, violin; Julia Purgina, viola; Maria Frodl, cello; Maximilian Ölz, contrabass. Conductor: Roland Freisitzer.

Track from the "Ensemble Reconsil Exploring the World" 14-CD box set.

“Temporal cubism” is an alegory I have used to describe much of my music, based on a number of aesthetic and technical correspondences with important features of cubist painting, such as the fragmentation of the artistic space(s), the reduction of naturally irregular contours into geometric shapes, and the discontinuous shifts in perspective within a single image. Cubist dances extrapolates this concept by mutating it into a surrealistic dance suite, built upon two simple concepts. One, unlike conventional suites, in a cubist suite the dances must be “shuffled” and combined in an absolutely nonlinear fashion. Two, these dances are themselves nonexistant in the real world (hence “surrealistic”); dealing with the idea of a “forged folklore” (as can actually be found in certain areas that historically lacked the necessary means for the development of an authentic folklore), they are taken from an imaginary “satanic songbook” which deliberately antagonizes and defies the established notions of traditional Western dance music.